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Sir Ralph Hopton, Royalist officer

The Battle of Babylon Hill was a skirmish between Royalist and Parliamentarian forces in South West England, on 7 September 1642, during the early stages of the First English Civil War. After a failed Parliamentarian siege of Sherborne, about 350 Royalists were sent to reconnoitre near Yeovil. Under the command of Sir Ralph Hopton (pictured), the detachment established itself on Babylon Hill, on the outskirts of the town. When they were withdrawing late in the day a force of Parliamentarians approached. A chaotic battle ensued, mostly due to the inexperience of the soldiers involved. The Parliamentarian force made a cavalry attack, which the Royalists were able to repel, though sections of both forces were routed. In the confusion, the Royalists were eventually able to pull back under the cover of darkness. Both sides claimed they had killed sixty or more; a modern estimate suggests that the Royalists lost around twenty, and the Parliamentarians five. (Full article...)

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On this day

September 7: First day of Rosh Hashanah (Judaism, 2021, AM 5782)

Philo Farnsworth

1159 – Pope Alexander III was chosen as the successor of Adrian IV in a disputed election.
1778 – Anglo-French War: France invaded the Caribbean island of Dominica and captured its British fort before Britain had even learned of the Franco-American alliance.
1927 – American inventor Philo Farnsworth (pictured) transmitted the first images using his all-electronic television system.
1965 – Indo-Pakistani War: The Pakistan Navy began a raid on the Indian coastal town of Dwarka in its first engagement against India.
2011 – Yak-Service Flight 9633, carrying the players and coaching staff of the ice hockey team Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, crashed on take-off near Yaroslavl, Russia, resulting in the deaths of 44 of the 45 people on board.

Robert Estienne (d. 1559)
Emil Korytko (b. 1813)
Michael DeBakey (b. 1908)

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Howell Cobb (September 7, 1815 – October 9, 1868) was an American politician and five-term member of the United States House of Representatives who served as Speaker of the House from 1849 to 1851. He also served as the 40th governor of Georgia from 1851 to 1853, and as Secretary of the Treasury under President James Buchanan from 1857 to 1860. Cobb is probably best known as one of the founders of the Confederacy, having served as president of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States. This line engraving of Cobb was produced around 1902 by the Department of the Treasury's Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) as part of a BEP presentation album of the first 42 secretaries of the treasury.

Engraving credit: Bureau of Engraving and Printing; restored by Andrew Shiva

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